Co-Sponsored by the History Department of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Roosevelt University, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Northwestern University's School of Communications

Friday, January 20, 2006, 3:30-5:00pm
The Newberry Library

From Users to Everyday Use: The Portable Missionary Radio Receiver in West Africa, 1954-1970
Timothy Stoneman, Georgia Institute of Technology

In the closing decades of the twentieth century, American evangelical broadcasters dramatically expanded their global operations. Using a wealth of original source materials, the current paper provides an intensive prehistory for the rise of international religious radio. The paper focuses on a single dimension, addressing how missionary users with Station ELWA in Liberia employed "pretuning" as a technical and social device to simultaneously construct audiences and constrict listenership between 1954 and 1970. The gradual diffusion of receivers and missionary programs in West Africa served to legitimate American conservative evangelical religion in the region and contributed to the continent's rise after 1970 as an epicenter of world Christianity.

All papers are pre-circulated. For a copy of the paper, e-mail Ginger Shulick at scholl@newberry.org, or call 312.255.3524